The Right Choice
by Modern Audrey
Summary: REPOST! Futurefic. 'Life couldn't possibly get much better than this.'


Note: As you may have seen in the story description, this is a repost.

- -

- -

**The Right Choice**

Standing in the doorway of her children's room, Jackie smiled at her two daughters. Stacy and Amanda were ten and eleven years old, and both looked just like their father. The two girls had light brown hair, and smiles that made their mother want to do anything they asked. It made discipline a major problem, because they both also had their mother's charmingly mismatched eyes, which their father had always been a sucker for.

At the moment, the two girls were stretched out on the floor in the small but comfortable bedroom, looking through their mother's old yearbooks. Stacy let out a high pitched giggle. "Look at this guy's hair! He looks like he got in a fight with a hair-dryer!"

"Let me see!" Amanda squealed. She grabbed hold of the yearbook and tried to pull it away from her sister. Stacy held firm.

"You can see in a minute," she said loudly. "I'm not through looking yet!"

Jackie winced. Also just like their mother and father, they fought constantly. As the two girls' struggles turned more violent, Jackie rushed to intervene. "Okay, break it up." She said in her best 'mom' voice. "You know that you aren't supposed to go through my closet."

"Oh, come on, Mom," Stacy, the more daring of the two, whined. "We just wanted to see how pretty you were in high school."

Oh… damn. How was she supposed to argue with that? With a defeated sigh, she sat down between her two little brats. "I can't say that I blame you. I was almost as gorgeous back then as I am now?"

Stacy snickered, but quickly turned it into a very fake sounding cough after seeing the glare her mother was sending her way.

"Oh, you really were beautiful Mommy," Amanda sighed, looking wistfully at her mother. She was a very pretty girl, with sparkling eyes and her mother's complexion. Shewas also about thirty pounds overweight.

Stacy, instantly picking up on her sister's sadness, smiled at her. "You look just like Mom in that picture, Mandy," she said, pointing at a picture of Jackie in her cheerleading uniform. Amanda smiled shyly, and Jackie made a mental note to buy a box of Stacy's favorite cake mix tomorrow.

She'd probably burn it, but it was the though that counted.

"Is this Aunt Donna?" Amanda asked incredulously, pointing at a picture of Jackie and the old basement gang.

Jackie grinned. "You bet it is. Didn't she look awful in those lumberjack clothes?" Stacy giggled, and Amanda looked at them disapprovingly.

"Hey! I have a shirt just like that! And, I bet that a flannel shirt and jeans were a lot more comfortable than those business suits she always has to wear now are." To Amanda, "lumberjack" clothes were the only decent dress in the world.

Jackie and Stacy exchanged a 'yeah, but it's not worth the fashion suicide' look, but kept silent.

"Hey! Here's Daddy!" Amanda shouted gleefully. "Look at how funny his clothes are!"

"Hey!" Jackie scolded. "I bought him that shirt!"

It was Amanda and Stacy's turn to share a look.

"Here's Uncle Fez and Uncle Eric," Jackie pointed out.

The girls stared.

"Oh my gosh," Stacy laughed. "they look so silly!"

Jackie grinned. They did look pretty weird in their striped bell-bottoms, making faces at the camera. She remembered yelling at them for ruining the picture. Not that she wasn't justified…they had totally stolen her spotlight.

"Hey," Amanda frowned. "Who's this guy sitting beside you, Mom?"

Jackie winced. She had been hoping that they wouldn't notice Him. "Oh," she struggled for an answer that didn't give too much away. "That's just a boy that Mommy used to know."

Stacy and Amanda looked at her impatiently.

"Mom, you only talk about yourself in the third person when you don't want us to know something," Stacy accused.

"Yeah," Amanda seconded. "Spill it."

Jackie sighed. She really hated getting into this. "There's really nothing to spill. I thought I was in love with him for a long time, but there were just too many problems. Him not feeling the same about me a major one. In the end, he married another girl, and I married your father."

"Wow, Mom had an unrequited love. He was really handsome," Stacy sighed.

Amanda frowned and slapped her on the shoulder. "He's not as handsome as Daddy!"

Jackie frowned at Amanda. "No hitting!" Then she grinned. "But when you're right, you're right. You're Daddy blows the socks off of every guy I've ever met, including this one. Besides he was a major jerk."

The two girls laughed.

"Actually, he does look kind of girly," Stacy admitted. "Look at how long his eyelashes are!"

"I'll second that," came a new, rather sarcastic, voice from the doorway.

Jackie looked up and grinned at her husband. "And how long have you been lurking over there?"

"I wasn't lurking," he replied, frowning. "I just happened to be walking by, and—"

"You heard us talking about Michael, and you just had to stand there and see what we'd say about you," Jackie cut him off, standing up and walking toward him, smiling that flirtatious smile that had done him in so many years ago. "And you say I'm the conceited one?"

"You are the conceited one," Steven Hyde growled, meeting her halfway and slipping an arm around her waist. "I don't know why I married you."

"Oh really?" Jackie giggled, sliding her hands up to play in his curly brown hair. "I do." And with that, she pulled him down for a long, lingering kiss.

"Oh, yeah," Steven muttered, and this time he was the one to kiss her.

From the bed, both girls let out a chorus of "Yucks" and Stacy told them to "get a room." But both of them were smiling.

And, across the room, with her face pressed against her Steven's chest and her arm's wrapped tight around his neck, Jackie smiled too. Life didn't get much better than this.

-

-

-

Written May 13, 2002

Notes: Basically I am changing screen names, and am in the process of deciding what to keep and what to toss. This, I am keeping. Why, you ask? Pure nostalgia. I wrote this way back in the day. Hyde and Jackie weren't together yet, and the biggest worries we had over the pairing was whether Jackie would ever dump Kelso. I miss those days…

I edited it a bit, but it is still so syrupy it makes my teeth hurt.

**Reviews welcome**, even though it's been 4 years!

Hope you guys don't mind, but I'm copying and pasting my original reviews for my own uses. I hate losing reviews.

danalee48  
2005-12-08  
ch 1, reply

Nice, I liked how you didn't tell us who Jackie married until the end.

Miss Tonya  
2005-07-22  
ch 1, reply

Aww, I totally loved this fic! I can't even put into words how much I loved it. A lot of "future" fics can be really corny, but this one was great!

BlackDog84  
2005-03-05  
ch 1, reply

very adorable!

Bohemian Storm  
2003-05-01  
ch 1, reply

That was very sweet. Nicely written, quite cute and unlike so many people in this fandom you know what punctuation is! Hooray for you!

Seriously though, I did enjoy this fic. It was well written and very, very sweet.

me  
2003-01-19  
ch 1, anon.

dat was sooooooooooooooo good!

Laura 1, anon.

I thought it'd be corny... well... it kinda is... but it was so cute... I felt all warm inside... good job!

stephie  
2002-09-13  
ch 1, anon.

THAT WAS ABSOLUTELY GROOVY!  
PLEZ WRITE MORE LIKE THAT!

Raven33  
2002-09-06  
ch 1, reply

Ahh; that was really, really cute :)

Fiery-tigress  
2002-08-17  
ch 1, reply

pretty cool story...nice surprise ending!

dramaqueen  
2002-07-26  
ch 1, reply

that was really good. i don't know if it was intentional but I love how you didn't reveal till the end whether it was Hyde or Kelso that Jackie married.

BelladonnasHelper  
2002-05-31  
ch 1, reply

That was cute! aBSOLUTELY! I knew it was gonna be Hyde that was Jackie's husband. I want him be. Write some more!

Juliet  
2002-04-28  
ch 1, anon.

Very cute story. You always write the best Jackie and Hyde fics. Keep up the wonderful work.

Villageidiot54  
2002-04-21  
ch 1, anon.

Hello, this was good. Nice story, applause, applause. Keep up the good work

Potato Chippy Weezer  
2002-04-16  
ch 1, reply

This is really good! At first I thought she was married to Kelso, but I was happy when i saw she was really married to Hyde. Keep up the good work!

2002-04-16  
ch 1, anon.

I though it was cute and well written.

Bunny1  
2002-04-15  
ch 1, reply

Gal, such big "awwws"!;) Love it, love it, love it:)

sugarhigh  
2002-04-15  
ch 1, anon.

that was really good, i loved it :)

Queen Kakia  
2002-04-14  
ch 1, reply

That was so sweet. Even though it had nothing to do wih T7S, I especially liked the part where Stacy tells Amanda that she looks like ackie in one of the pictures. That's such a sweet sister thing to do. The only issue/problem/question I have is Kelso not being part of the group anymore. I mean, sure, he's a jerk with Jackie and they should not be together, but he's still friends with Eric and Fez and everyone. Other than that nitpick, though, I enjoyed the fic a lot.

sash  
2002-04-14  
ch 1, anon.

aawwwww, this is really sweet, anymore sweetness coming our way?

verovenus  
2002-04-13  
ch 1, reply

awwwww! too cute. I liked how you kept me the name of "the guy" a mistery... That was great. And Aunt Donna and her lumberjack chlothes... LOL Funny. Are you going to write more or leave it like that?


End file.
